Chapter Text
Something was off today, Olivia could feel it. She’d driven to work with an anxious cloud hovering above her head and her eyes on the rear-view the entire way.
This wasn’t going to be her kind of day.
She stepped into the bullpen at 1-6 to see Elliot back at his desk.
Frowning, she asked, “What are you doing here? I thought you were due in court on the Bailey case.”
Elliot leaned back in his chair with a shrug. “Novak requested a continuance and the judge granted it. We reconvene tomorrow at ten.”
Liv stowed her jacket and took a seat behind her desk. “She give a reason?”
“Nope, just said she had personal business and needed a continuance. When I followed her out to ask if there was anything I could do, she was already gone. Last time I saw her, she looked pretty spooked, or at least worried. Must have been bad, whatever it was.”
“Yeah,” Liv agreed quietly. Something about this didn’t sit well with her. Casey wasn’t one to just skip out for no reason. Judges were finicky bastards on a good day; one did not test their patience by requesting a continuance on a controversial case like Bailey’s. There was no silencing the warning bells sounding at the back of Liv’s mind at this point.
“The weird thing is she was right in front of me leaving the courtroom. There was a bunch of reporters waiting outside and she managed to avoid both them and me. Don’t know how she did it, but I’d love to learn that trick.”
“Same here.” Liv tapped a few keys in a false start to a report that had been awaiting her attention for over a week. It was a false start all right; she minimized the window and opened a new email page. She had the sudden urge to speak to Casey and the feeling that a phone call wasn’t going to do the trick.
‘Everything all right?’ was all she could manage when she let her fingers do the talking. Her gut told her that everything wasn’t coming up roses wherever Casey was. Her gut always told her that, though, since in her line of work nothing was ever just fine. She almost hoped she was just being paranoid. She almost knew better.
Having lost one ADA—and friend and more—she wasn’t prepared to lose another. If she had to be the one to take the bullet, she wasn’t about to watch Casey disappear. Twice was just too often to lose that big.
‘Call me,’ she added. ‘Please,’ she didn’t. Something about that last word gave her away and she couldn’t have that. No particular reason other than she wasn’t ready. Maybe she wouldn’t ever be.
She hit ‘Send’ and sat back. That was something done—something. Sighing, she remembered that she still had more to do. That report and many others were calling her name in screeching tones. No one mentioned this much deskwork when I first signed up. She clicked back to the previous screen and began to type in earnest. Before long she was so engrossed in her reports that the time flew by and before she knew it, it was late morning.
“No new emails,” she murmured to herself. Her worry grew a little more and she chided herself for it. Casey was a grown woman; she had survived a good while without a babysitter, she could probably stand to go a few hours. Still, it was definitely out of character.
Before Liv was able to consider just how out of character Casey’s sudden disappearance was, Elliot’s phone rang: a case. Phone still attached to his ear, he was already up from his chair and reaching for his jacket. She was behind the eight-ball, the last place she could afford to be.
She snagged the car keys before he did and took the lead. He’d fill her in on the way. That much was always constant, Elliot had her back.